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2014 students, each roll 9 (standard, unbiased) six-sided dice and record how many times each of the numbers 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6 appear. Find the minimum number of students who must have recorded the same result as another student.

Source: WISCONSIN MATHEMATICS, SCIENCE & ENGINEERING TALENT SEARCH.


The answer is 12.

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1 solution

Nicola Mignoni
May 1, 2019

Let x i x_i , 1 i 6 1 \leq i \leq 6 be the number of times i i appears after that the single student rolled the 9 9 dices. We have that

i = 1 6 x i = 9 , x i 0 \displaystyle \sum_{i=1}^{6} x_i=9, \ x_i \geq 0 .

In other terms, the single outcome i i can appear 0 , 1 , . . . 0, \ 1,... or 9 9 times out of 9 9 roll. Despite the possible outcomes, the sum of the frequences has to be 9 9 , since the student rolled exactly 9 9 dices. The previous equation has ( 9 + 6 1 6 1 ) = ( 14 5 ) = 2002 \displaystyle \binom{9+6-1}{6-1}=\binom{14}{5}=2002 possible solution, applying a notorious stars and bars argument. Hence, even if the first 2002 2002 students will record 2002 2002 different solution, the minimum number of students who must have recorded the same result as another student is 2014 2002 = 12 2014-2002=\boxed{12} .

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